Blade of the Immortal

It is being touted as "Miike's 100th film" and, while one could argue whether the numbering is strictly correct, it's close enough to be reasonable. Here's to another 100.

It's that balance of Miike's experience with his retained childlike energy in making a kick-ass samurai movie that keeps this journey engaging.

The director's 100th feature, Blade of the Immortal shows Miike to have lost none of the madcap energy and wit that characterize his best work. And while this is not that, it's still got more style to burn than almost any recent Hollywood actioner.

Miike retains his twisted sense of humor, with mangling and disemboweling deployed for comic effect. And after 99 movies, he certainly knows how to make action memorable.

Marvel Studios probably won't be hiring Takashi Miike to direct his take on any of its properties any time soon. But Blade Of The Immortal makes that seem like an exciting idea.

"Blade" goes for the carotid while offering a classic look and a comic-book story. It's part Kurosawa, part "X-Men," part "Ichi the Killer."

it delivers for Miike devotees, although the film itself needs to be sliced.

It's thrilling and touching and absurd, sprawling and intimate and severe, and never less than uninhibited. In short: it's a mad Miike film through and through.

Blade of the Immortal lacks depth as a quest for redemption narrative, but makes for good (and very bloody) pulpy fun in Miike's skillful hands.

The fantastical elements are suitably cartoonish, but they're set in a world that's down to earth and grimy, and contains violence that's very bloody.

This results in an adaptation that should be an exciting film of revenge and redemption, but feels like a quirky slog of a chambara film that we've seen before, but with extra blood.

If you like your violence cartoonish, your action expertly choreographed, your fight scenes to be old-fashioned limb-chopping orgies of blood and gore... I reckon you'll come out of Blade of the Immortal more than happy. I did